Throughout the week children were busy putting together their creative ideas for our inventions week.

Children looked at inspirational and ground-breaking discoveries from Muslim civilisations that impact many walks of life even today such as: medicine, flight, transport, architecture, education, health, agriculture, mechanics, astronomy, navigation and more.

Each year group worked on different inventions as can be seen below:

Year 6: Year 6 learnt about Abbas Ibn Firnaas who made the first recorded parachute jump and used the first known hang glider. Students explored how he gained knowledge of flight by studying birds. In relation to the topic of aviation, children made kites and small gliders and tried to fly them in the school playground.

Year 5: For invention week year 5 looked at the history of textiles. We looked into fabrics, both as clothing and for home items, such as, rugs and beddings. The children learnt about the first Persian rugs and the skills used to weave them. They were amazed at how advanced the Muslim Arabs were in developing fabrics centuries before the development of cotton in the industrial revolution.

Year 4: Children learnt about the great advancements Muslims made in the understanding of astrology. The chn looked at the contributions made by Abu Ja’far Al-Mansoo, an Abbasid caliph who ordered the building of observatories to conduct research, to the most notable Muhammad Al-Farghaani who lived in the fourth century A.H, made innovative researches on determining the accurate length of the year, the various lengths of the day and night, and the movements of the planets and stars. The children also took part in drawing their own astrolabes, an 8th century Muslim development that was amazingly accurate. It was used to determine the altitude of the planets and to determine time.

Year 3: Children used paper tubes to create their own sculptures and models of buildings. They investigated the strength of the paper tube by how tight they rolled it up then manipulating as they wish. They found out what shapes make good structures.

Year 1 and 2: Children investigated how paper is made and how different patterns are made on paper. Children used paint to create Turkish marble art on paper.